Susan Sontag is a [grim] figure, for the idea of alternatives in every possible situation always replaces the bread of life. In her novels as in her essays, she is concerned with producing a startling esthetic which her words prolong. She is interested in advancing new positions to the point of making her clever, surprisingly sustained novels experiments in the trying-out of an idea. One respects these books, even their total intellectual solemnity, because they are entirely manifestations of Sontag's personal will over esthetic situations defined as those in which originality functions by asserting itself. (p. 180)

[What] makes Sontag's novels more than curiosities is her belief that fiction is a trying-out, an hypothesis which you carry out, not prove. The "world" is entirely plastic. Today we improvise, and tonight we shall improvise something else. Her books are films in the sense that there are shots of one idea...